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Hello, I’ve got two tank systems setup for neos, dwarf Mexican crayfish, different snails, and Cory cats. I am preparing to transition one of the systems to accommodate crystal shrimp or alternatively sulawesi if the parameters are unacceptable. I would love to hear thoughts on whether these companions/parameters seem feasible to sustaining populations: 14 gallón setup - KH - 2, GH - 6, PH - 6.8 Crystal red/PRL or panda shrimp, blue dream neos, Mexican CPO crayfish, 2 nerite snails for algae, maybe Cory cats? 8 gallon setup - KH - 5, GH - 8, PH - 7.6 Red rili neos, mystery snails, rabbit snails, Cory cats (I think, if not I’ll keep the crayfish here), I will keep Cuttlebone for the snails here. Does this sound like it will be successful to you experienced keepers?

One month update: I think I am down to about 14 babies now. There aren't that many places to hide from view because I can look at the tank from both sides. Some have grown a bit (6-7mm long) and are going around grazing, so maybe those will be ok. Many of them are still tiny like 4 mm, which is only a little bit bigger than when first born. Maybe they just grow up slow or aren't getting the right kind of nutrition. Some are still stationary, which is kind of troubling. The adult shrimp seem to be doing fine, so nothing is too far wrong, but something is still not quite right for the babies. Some are grazing and also pooping, so there must be biofilm around? But there are hardly any in the moss, and I thought (baby) shrimp are supposed to love moss because it is a good source of biofilm. I suspect the tank does not have enough, or the "right kind", or biofilm since there doesn't seem to be a lot of growth on the walls, nor the HMF sponge filter. (All the other aquariums I see in the pet stores have all kinds of algae and crap growing on the sponge filter,and shrimp gathered all over it. Whereas my HMF filter sponge looks clean and hardly any shrimp gather on it) The nitrates always read zero - I think because the moss sucks it up right away and causes yellowing in some of the other plants. As for feeding, I alternate between shrimp food pellets, mulberry pellet ,and Bacter AE, each day. (Plus an occasional day of nothing) The first two are mainly in hopes of keeping the adults happy so they don't go around eating up too much of the biofilm. And I don't try to use powdered food so as to prevent water pollution. But this is still more feeding than before there were babies, so maybe I should cut back again to prevent water pollution? Water change schedule is 10-15% per week.

I think it is Scutariella or maybe "leech", as shown in this thread: I have had those in the past too, and yes it wriggles quickly and yes it can easily detach and land somewhere else, and yes you can nuke it with a salt dip and no it is not killing your shrimp - something else is.

I have found an assassin snail or two to be effective in keeping invasive snails down. People claim they can eat the shrimp, but I haven’t seen this or seen any reduction in shrimp numbers; they’re too fast for them. Also, floating a slightly blanched lettuce leaf will draw many of the snails in board. You can simple remove the lettuce leaf and discard.

Yeah just manual removal at the moment, or crushing the smaller ones for the shrimp to feed on.

Got a nice number of juvi shrimp, found 13 larger juvi a day or two ago and this morning found another 4 tiny juvi, so things are going well.

Thanks, Simon! I agree, I think they may be a little small for breeding just yet but hopefully some hit maturity within this peak season. I have also noticed that they are much pickier eaters than my neos, but I enjoy trying new things to see what they will like.

Well, here is the update on this. The last two shrimp died. I think I am done buying from that dealer. Even though they say they have a high survival rate. My tank with the blues is doing great. It is now an active colony.

I left the light ON for 16 hours may have even been more.

Okay so bit of a long story here... I recently ordered an anacharis plant online for my planted tank. The tank is a bit less than 5 gal has rcs, an oto and 3 neon tetras. I am very meticulous about the tank checking, and observing it daily with regular water checks and changes. I anchored my anacharis to a stone after giving it a nice rinse and plopped it into my tank and went to bed. Next morning I went to watch everyone swimming around, the fish were all great looking, but didn’t see any shrimps. This was instantly worrying to me, I always see at least a couple shrimp hanging out on the grass or on the hydrocotyle plants, plus one of the females recently had babies and none were to be seen. After looking around the edges of the tank I began to find the adults they were all curled up and wedged in tight spaces. All but one adult was dead. I did some quick research online and people were saying they had this happen when putting in new plants because there was copper or pesticides on the plant which the shrimp are sensitive to. So I took the plant out and placed it into a tub of water and did a water change. I thought to myself “lesson learned, clean the plants thoroughly before adding them to the tank” but that wasnt the end of it. I went back to my tank to observe the last adult shrimp, and noticed a baby too. My hopes got up a bit and then I noticed something on my shrimps nose like a white speck. I did some more research and thought at first it was Scutariella. However after further observation I noticed this was definitely something else. This thing was moving around the shrimps rostrum quite a bit and I could see it was agitating the shrimp (took a video on my iphone but its too big to attach). It didnt seem to bother the shrimp to much at first but after checking back after a couple hours my shrimp was having seizures, twitching and looked so so distressed that it turned my stomach. I kept observing because I was having trouble finding anything even similar online. After some hours of torment the shrimp looked lifeless. And then it gets even WORSE, the baby that I saw earlier which was definitely free of any ecto parasites now had the same thing crawling on its rostrum. I fished out the dead adult with my net and sure enough there was no parasite to be found. I went to the local fish store and showed the guy some pictures and videos and he said he’d never seen anything like it. Has anyone else seen this thing before? Im thinking maybe the anacharis was grown in a lake and a parasite hitch hiked maybe? I’ll attach the best pictures and videos of it I was able to get. Some details I noticed: it has an antenna looking thing that it swings around kinda like Scutariella, but unlike Scutariella it moves around a lot, it seriously stresses its host and presumably kills them, and it will target both adult shrimp and babies. I picked up some kordon ich and parasite treatment from the fish store, if all my shrimp end up dying do you guys think this will wipe out these degenerates so it doesn't happen again? Thanks for any thoughts and answers!!! the images and videos were too big to add to the post so I uploaded them to imgur for anyone whod like to see: https://m.imgur.com/a/CjQiCFW